Author: LaToya M. Davidson-Perez

When possible, I try to have a cheery disposition and outlook on life. Granted those times seem to be much fewer and farther between, I still cling to the hope that I’ll reach the next summit, that the day-to-day of life won’t keep me down. And while I have a bit of a handicap, severe depression, I do try to celebrate life’s little daily wins as a way of keeping many of my woes at bay. It’s difficult, life’s difficult. Today was one of those rare days where I was so depressed that it physically hurt to breathe.

I recently found myself thinking about the past. I’m guilty of looking more backward than I do forward. This makes the present a very sad place to be. The past cannot be changed while the future has yet to unfold. However, when I revisit the past I frame and reframe the narrative, like a book shelving and re-shelving frequently taking it down to review again. To that end, there is some comfort in even the miseries of the past. It’s a fixed point in time that you know you can’t change but that you can run what-if scenarios and reanalyze what happened and how you should have handled or even avoided the situation. Continue reading “The Realities of Life” →

The very reason why I took a respite from writing is why I now return. Then too, the season is changing, and this time of year my mood takes a definitive and sometimes unwelcomed shift. What I’ve discovered, however, is that as I get older the more that I start to understand myself.

Honestly, age and time provide a sense of clarity that is not often found in one’s youth. That isn’t to say that that wisdom just falls into your lap. I’m guilty of being insane. Specifically, there has been a person who has been in and around the periphery of my life for about a decade who never should have been. My naivete and inexperience allowed me to explain away why he was allowed to remain after February 20th, 2010. Let me be clear. Even now, I have and will likely always have deep affection for this person (the version of him that I fictitiously built in my head), but the caveat is that there are pieces of delusional insanity inside of all of us.

This isn’t going to be some tantalizing manifesto on past transgressions. Nor is it meant to be a male-bashing fest. Breakthroughs hurt. Life hurts. S— happens. We make mistakes, and at some point, we hope to learn from them. Well, you either learn, or you’re destined to repeat them. And then you die. Continue reading “Introspective Retrospect” →

I’m taking some time away from social media and writing. This is my last post and last poem for the foreseeable future. It’s time for me to fully devote myself to how I’m evolving and to take better care of myself. At this point, I just don’t have anything left to say.

Continue reading “Going Dark” →